1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for processing variable length data in which words, records, files, and the like are delimited by delimiter codes.
2. Description of the Related Art
when data processing is performed in a variable length data format, processed variable length data are delimited by word and record delimiter codes in units of words and records, and are sequentially arrayed and stored on a memory. When processing is performed for the variable length data string arrayed and stored on the memory, the variable length data string is sequentially read out from the memory and the word and record delimiter codes are retrieved. For example, when a second word in each record in the memory is extracted to perform updating processing, a record delimiter code in the memory is retrieved, and a first word delimiter code from the retrieved record delimiter code is retrieved to extract the second word (because the second word is arrayed to follow the first word). In order to extract the second word in each record, the above retrieval processing must be repetitively executed.
In this manner, in the conventional system, every time processing is performed for the variable length data string which is delimited by various delimiter data such as delimiter codes, the above-mentioned retrieval processing must be executed, resulting in a time-consuming operation.
This also applies to a case wherein a word to be processed in each record is predetermined, e.g., a variable word is a second word and other words are fixed words. The retrieval processing must be executed every time processing for the word to be processed is performed.